PUTIN -- QADDAFI -- BEN LADEN label them MURDERERS.

Because the United States agreed to negotiate and is doing so with Iran rather than use military force to stop the Iranian production of nuclear weapon; and, because the United States chose to negotiate the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons rather than respond with air strikes against Syria; Putin, the 21st century Russian Czar, has miscalculated and seen American willingness to talk rather than shoot as a sign of weakness.  Twice in the last century the rulers of Germany and then once the ruler of Japan made the same mistake.  America may take a long time to get roused in anger enough to unleash our military might but when we do dictators have learned to pay a heavy price.

Obama is trying to use 21st century multilateral methods to combat the new Stalin.  Whether he succeeds will remain to be seen.  But Putin would be well advised to ignore the Republican party propaganda in DC about Obama being weak and recognize that on this issue -- the freedom of the people of Ukraine-- Obama will remain strong.  Shooting down a plane is akin to sinking ships a hundred years ago (Lusitania) an public ire will grow not diminish.

Unfortunately too many of my liberal friends (I consider myself a liberal) are bemoaning the “lack of clear evidence of Russian involvement” some have even taken to blaming the United States for starting the Ukraine crisis (which began when Putin forced his puppet President of Ukraine, Yanukoyvich, to drop plans to integrate with the EU which led to a popular uprising in Ukraine).  Both Putin and our domestic liberal commentators say the answer is to guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO.  Firstly, Ukraine has never applied nor indicated interest in joining NATO--they want to be in the EU.  Secondly, Ukraine in 1994 gave up their nuclear weapons as part of the Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing their territorial integrity only to have that integrity violated by a nuclear power.  Now, guarantee that Ukraine will never be admitted to NATO, should they ever apply, and we invite Putin to take more aggressive action later.

The history of the 20th century is replete with occasions when democratic nations could have stopped dictators when they first made aggressive moves.  And when the democracies didn’t act the resultant wars costs millions of lives.

It is time we accepted that not everything in foreign affairs is complex - likewise not everything is simple.  Because the Bush-Cheney administration lied our country into a war in Iraq does not mean that Obama-Biden are lying us into peace through strength.  Because the English translators of the Russian language recordings released by Ukraine used complete sentences and deleted curses doesn’t mean the recordings are fake -- those who understand and speak Russian find the actual language credible.

Russian separatists aided or directed by Russians used a Russian supplied weapon to shoot down what they thought was a Ukrainian cargo or troop plane.  They made a mistake. They should have admitted it and pointed out that mistakes are made in wars.  Instead Putin blames Ukraine.  When a fox broke into my grandfather's chicken coop and stole two hens instead of trying to remove the danger and kill the fox, Putin would blame my grandfather for building the hen house and filling it with chickens.

Obama is Right.  This is a wake up call!  And if Europe doesn’t want to wake up then America must lead.  In the 20th century in WWI and WWII we followed.  During the Cold War we led.  Now it is time for us to lead again. This may be our last chance to bring Russia into the world community as a peaceful partner as Gorbachev and Yeltsin tried to do.  This may indeed be our last chance to put together a world of old powers (Germany, France, United Kingdom and Russia) and the emerging powers (Brazil, India, China and South Africa) We can lead that combination -- we must not let it become a new division with Russia leading one part.  Putin has shown the world what he is capable of doing - now America must show the world that we will not allow him to bully the other nations on this globe. 

19 July 2014    

STAY HOME AMERICA -- STAY HOME

Once again the United States finds itself facing a crisis in another part of the world and confronting the decision as to the degree, if any, of our involvement.   I am not an isolationist; in fact, I have often supported military intervention by our nations in foreign: conflicts the Korean War, the invasion of Grenada (by Reagan), the Gulf War to liberate Kuwait, and the bombing campaign to stop the genocide in Kosovo, and the Libyan air intervention to assist the rebels in overthrowing Qaddafi.  I also supported aid to democratic forces seeking to oust Assad in Syria and I believe that our failure to aid those indigenous rebels opened the way for the takeover of that revolution by ultra extremists who now have declared an Islamic Caliphate and apparently oppose the Iraqi Shiite regime, the Iranian - Syrian - Lebanese (Hezbollah) alliance and evidently Russia as well as possibly Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

The United States of course should always protect its territory and its people and their security and our national interests even to the point of military action.

We do not belong in the middle of an intra-Muslim theologically based and culturally based civil war between Shia and Sunni.  While we should not in any way condone the barbarity of the Islamic State (ISIS) we should not be perceived in the Muslim world as opposing a Sunni radicalism and not a Shia radicalism.

After our invasion of Iraq in 2013 which I publicly opposed that nation devolved into three parts - even if only de facto: a Shiite section which dominated the nation; a Sunni minority and a Kurdish region in the northeast.  The United States always opposed any effort by the peoples of those regions to seek their own countries and became the defender of the territorial integrity of Iraq - a territory created by Winston Churchill (he drew the map in 1921) out of three provinces of the Ottoman Empire (a Shia, a Sunni and a Kurd region).

A similar situation is developing in Afghanistan which threatens to divide into a Pashtun majority area, which the Taliban may take control of, and a Tajik area in the north of that state (which was the base of the anti Soviet and anti Taliban forces).  We do not belong in the middle of that conflict either.

Our use of military force should be limited to defending our national interest and any ratified treaty obligations (such as NATO) and clear instances when nations which share our democratic values and have shown decades of friendship to our people are threatened (e.g Israel and Jordan). We should not be sending American men and women to fight in intra national disputes nor in civil wars

Before our involvement anywhere in the world goes beyond diplomacy and economic sanctions we should observe certain cautions:

First) We have no obligation to defend the territorial integrity of states whose boundaries were established by European colonial powers.  We should judge the integrity of a state by the ability of that state to represent a population that considers itself a nation. (In the failed state of Somalia we have opposed the independence of the former British Somaliland which has now held three successive democratic elections over a fifteen year period and has remained at peace with unity among the various tribal clans. Once again we are shortsighted for no apparent reason than our opposition to secession (we took the same position in Yugoslavia as that nation divided into seven separate states which we reluctantly accepted each time after a few years of opposition.)

Second) We should never intervene in a genuine civil war based on religious or cultural divisions unless there is a clear threat to the security of our nation.

Third) We should support popular democratic revolutions with military aid (not troops) early and use our other weapons - diplomatic and economic

and even air power, to make certain the democratic forces win and the revolutions are not hijacked by extremists.

President Obama handled Libya the right way with air support to indigenous rebels who were then successful. He flubbed it in Syria.  He was right to end the Iraq War and should fully disengage from Afghanistan.  Obama must not allow our nation be re-involved in Iraq.  Already from a reputed 200 troops/advisers within three days the number had become 750.   That number must not increase and we should evacuate the multi -billion dollar embassy compound we built in Baghdad (a larger geographic area than the Vatican City state).  Americans have been coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan under this President now it behooves him to allow our men and women in uniform to Stay Home.

9 July 2014

THE SUPREME COURT - ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY AGAIN

Too often in our nations’ history the Supreme Court has been dominated by judges who rule on the wrong side of history and against the clear wishes of the American people.

Today in this new 21st century the Roberts Court (led by a Reagan era Justice department staffer) is again standing against history as it attempts to undo many of the reforms of the 60's and 70's.  The Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with the absurd reasoning that since the Act has been successful and all Americans are now assured of voting rights it is no longer necessary to keep in place the federal protections that led to that success. The blind justices sitting on their exalted bench feel that forty years of elections free from racial discrimination against some electors trumps the two hundred and fifty years of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.

This Court is also determined to undo women’s 9th amendment rights to reproductive freedom of choice (Griswold v Conn. and Roe v. Wade) by chipping away at those rights in the name of other rights (freedom of speech and religion). So freedom of religion allows an employer to offer health insurance to employees that doesn’t cover anything that the employer doesn’t believe in; and freedom of speech allows demonstrators to intimidate women who wish to seek reproductive health care. (The Supreme Court of course can keep demonstrators away from their doors)

Nor satisfied with curbing the rights of minorities and women the Court has now gone after labor unions by limiting the use of Agency shop. Decades ago in response to those who felt that compulsory union membership was an infringement of workers' rights a public policy consensus was developed around a system where those who didn’t want to join a union, but would benefit from the terms of union negotiated contracts, would pay dues to the union: seemed fair to all sides. Now the Court weighs in against that concept - again in a limited way but clearly foreshadowing its willingness to go further.  And, in a case that effectively consigns part time women employees to going back to non representation and lower wages.

In what I can only conclude is a strategy both clever and disingenuous. The conservative Justices have determined to use some rights as means to curtail others - so the 1st amendment overpowers the 9th amendment; the 14th amendment seems to be often ignored; the 2nd amendment (misread) trumps them all and the rights of corporations who are now given some mystical form of personhood are given a sanctity that only an oligarch would commend.

In the 1850's the Taney Court became the protector of Slavery with the Dred Scott decision that even went to the point of declaring that no free Negro could be considered an American citizen. The racist decisions of that Court were ultimately overturned by three constitutional amendments; passed after a bloody Civil War that cost over 600,000 lives and millions of dollars of property.

In the 1890's the Court empowered robber barons as they attempted to monopolize industries and beat down workers efforts to organize; and that court also legitimized state enacted segregation laws.  The Populist and later the Progressive movements rallied enough people to eventually regulate the large monopolies.  It took another Court, and a national popular movement (non-violent but often met with attendant violence), to end 60+ years of the effects of the Plessy v Ferguson ruling and dismantle legal segregation and end lynching and indiscriminate racial killings.

In the 1930's the Court dominated by conservative old men attempted to gut the New Deal by killing most of the first laws passed by Congress to reform the economic factors that led to the Great Depression. The American people by re-electing FDR in 1936 and again in 1940 turned the Court around; first because the Judges were intimidated by Roosevelt's’ revival of US Grant’s court expansion plan, and second by FDR’s serving long enough to replace most of the old judges.

The American people, whose progress of the past century in social and economic matters has been steady and strong, must in the upcoming elections support Progressive (which in today's context means Democratic) candidates so the Supreme Court can again be turned around and headed in the progressive direction.  As in the past the Supreme Court and its decisions will be rejected as reactionary and anti-democratic. 

2 July 2014